In June, 2008, three months before news broke of David Foster Wallace's death, I plowed through Infinite Jest over one long hot summer, usually reclining in my parents' backyard, enjoying the comforts of home and the time to read for pleasure after my sophomore year of college. As a freshman I had grown enamored of Wallace's short stories and essays, and it seemed like that summer was my chance to give his magnum opus a try. It took me six weeks, but I made it to the final page, the final footnote. I read every word devoted to tennis, every aside that supplied the scientific name of a name-brand drug, every discourse on optics or nuclear fusion.

Was it worth it? Sure. Would I ever read it again? No way.

In July, 2017, three months after getting laid off from a full-time job, I plowed through Infinite Jest in my off hours after I began working here, at City Lit. I don't know what possessed me to give it another go. Maybe I was just curious to see if I could finish it again, or maybe I was watching too much TV and needed something that required sustained attention. Whatever it was, I did read the whole thing again, and I'm glad I did.

It's a lot easier the second time around. The plot, which often resembles a Gordian knot, becomes looser and more manageable when you know what you're getting into, and the extravagently boring passages--those that caused my eyes to glaze over nine years before--reveal exquisite turns of phrase that remind you that Wallace had poetry, not just hyperarticulate prose, at his fingertips.

Have you read Infinite Jest? Did you read the first hundred pages and need to be cajoled into picking it up again? Come join us at City Lit for discussion and conversation on Tuesday, September 19th, at 6:30 PM. Bring your insights, aggravations, and, if you like, snacks or wine to share!

We’ve had a busy summer at City Lit Books; new booksellers, our 5th Birthday, some really cool author events, and lots of great new reads, but September is here and soon the season will be over! Don’t let the cooling weather get you down though - there are lots of great new books being released this Fall, and we’ve got some great authors coming for readings in the store. Here’s an update on what our book clubs are reading this month, so grab one of these titles while you’re soaking up the last of the summer sun, then come hang out and tell us what you think!

Wilde Readers Book Club, our reading group for LGBTQ+ literature, is kicking off September with another classic novel: Confession of a Mask by Yukio Mishima.

One of the classics of modern Japanese fiction, it is the story of an adolescent who must learn to live with the painful fact that he is unlike other young men. Mishima's protagonist discovers that he is becoming a homosexual in a polite, post-war Japan. To survive, he must live behind a mask of propriety.

Confessions of a Mask tells the story of Kochan, a boy tormented by his burgeoning attraction to men: he wants to be "normal." Kochan is meek-bodied, and unable to participate in the more athletic activities of his classmates. He begins to notice his growing attraction to some of the boys in his class, particularly the pubescent body of his friend Omi. To hide his homosexuality, he courts a woman, Sonoko, but this exacerbates his feelings for men. As news of the War reaches Tokyo, Kochan considers the fate of Japan and his place within its deeply rooted propriety. Confessions of a Mask reflects Mishima's own coming of age in post-war Japan. Its publication in English--praised by Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, and Christopher Isherwood-- propelled the young Yukio Mishima to international fame.

Wilde Readers book club will meet on Tuesday, September 12th at 6:30 pm. You can email matt@citylitbooks.com with any questions.

Some of us have been reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace this summer, and to celebrate the end of the marathon we'll be hosting a special book club meeting to discuss the book. Whether you've taken the challenge and read it this summer, read it in the past, or given up halfway through - come hang out!

A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human - and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.

This month our Found in Translation Book Club, where we dive into fresh English translations of stand-out fiction from around the world, is reading Adua by Igiaba Scego.

Adua, an immigrant from Somalia to Italy, has lived in Rome for nearly forty years. She came seeking freedom from a strict father and an oppressive regime, but her dreams of becoming a film star ended in shame. Now that the civil war in Somalia is over, her homeland beckons. Yet Adua has a husband who needs her, a young man, also an immigrant, who braved a dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea. When her father, who worked as an interpreter for Mussolini’s fascist regime, dies, Adua inherits the family home. She must decide whether to make the journey back to reclaim her material inheritance, but also how to take charge of her own story and build a future.

The Found in Translation Book Club will meet Thursday, September 21st at 6:30 pm. Email devon@citylitbooks.com with questions.

Tell Me How It Ends, our reading group for nonfiction titles focusing on current events and social justice, is reading Just Mercyby Bryan Stevenson for September.

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn't commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

Our book club exploring collections of short stories from writers new and established, In Brief, is reading If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler turns out to be not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together they form a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue both the story lines that intrigue them and one another.

Italo Calvino imagines a novel capable of endless mutations in this intricately crafted story about writing and readers.

Our monthly celebration of the weird, be it science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, magical realism, or any genre otherwise strange, the Weird & Wonderful Book Club, has chosen Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman for September.

Cold Hand in Mine was first published in the U.K. in 1975 and in the U.S. in 1977. The story 'Pages from a Young Girl's Journal' won the Aickman World Fantasy Award in 1975. It was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1973 before appearing in this collection.

Cold Hand in Mine stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full, being more ambiguous than standard ghost stories. Throughout the stories the reader is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul. There is also a nod to the conventional vampire story ('Pages from a Young Girl's Journal') but all the stories remain unconventional and inconclusive, which perhaps makes them all the more startling and intriguing.

Weird & Wonderful will meet Wednesday, September 27th at 6:30 pm.

As always, there’s no sign up or obligation for our book clubs – just stop by the store for the book (with our book club discount), then come ready to join the conversation!

Hard to believe! But when I think about all of the wonderful people, conversations, events, and interactions we have had since August of 2012, the meaning and magnitude of “five years” really starts to sink in.

People ask me if opening a bookstore was a dream. While I planned and hoped to build a lovely place around books, there was no way I could imagine or anticipate the wonderful experiences that began as soon as we opened our doors. Something amazing occurs every single day – children rushing to get to the back of the store, tourists from other countries visiting us for a second time, and customers finding a book that they couldn’t find anywhere else.

It is a privilege to be here every day. All of us at City Lit Books thank you foryour constant support and for sharing our passion for books and this place where thinking people gather. We have learned a lot from you and how to serve our community of avid readers. Stay tuned for what’s next!

This is an exciting milestone. Yet even more exciting are all of the future conversations that we can’t imagine but know will come our way.

Hey Logan Square - We’re helping Tutoring Chicago find volunteers for their tutoring program at Goethe Elementary School. They currently have more than 200 students registered, and they need more tutors! More information at www.tutoringchicago.org

This month we are celebrating a couple of our recent favorites by making them book club picks! You can join our book clubs anytime, but we are really excited about some of these choices, so if you haven’t been before come join the conversation!

This month's Wilde Readers book is Christodora by Tim Murphy.

In this epic, ambitious, and deeply poignant novel, Tim Murphy follows a diverse group of people whose fates intertwine in an iconic building in Manhattan's East Village, the Christodora. Moving kaleidoscopically from the Tompkins Square Riots and the activism of the 1980s to a future New York City of the 2020s where subzero winters are a thing of the past, Christodora recounts the heartbreak wrought by AIDS, portrays the allure and destructive power of hard drugs, and brings to life a bohemian Lower Manhattan of artists and idealists.

On Avenue B in the East Village, the Christodora is home to Milly and Jared, a privileged young couple with artistic ambitions. Their neighbor, Hector, a gay Puerto Rican man who was at one point celebrated for his work as an AIDS activist but has now descended into the throes of drug addiction, becomes connected to Milly and Jared's lives in ways none of them can anticipate. Meanwhile, Milly and Jared's adopted son Mateo grows to see the opportunity for both self-realization and oblivion offered by New York City. As the junkies and protestors of the 1980s give way to the hipsters of the 2000s and they in turn to the wealthy inhabitants of the glass towers of the 2020s, enormous changes rock the personal lives of Milly and Jared and the constellation of people around them.

Christodora is a panoramic novel that powerfully evokes the danger, chaos, and wonder of New York City--and the strange and moving ways in which its dwellers' lives can intersect.

We hosted author Tim Murphy almost a year ago for a great talk about Christodora and his experience in covering HIV/AIDS as a journalist. Teresa and Matt both loved this novel. Come chat about it Tuesday, August 8th at 6:30 pm! Email matt@citylitbooks.com with questions.

This month, for our Found in Translation book club, we're reading Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin, translated by Bonnie Huie.

The English-language premiere of Qiu Miaojin's coming-of-age novel about queer teenagers in Taiwan, a cult classic in China and winner of the 1995 China Times Literature Award.

Set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, this cult classic is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and major countercultural figure.

Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend.

Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.

Check out Notes on a Crocodile at our book club meeting Thursday, August 17th at 6:30 pm! Email devon@citylitbooks.com for questions.

In Brief meets this month to discuss Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan.

In the United Arab Emirates, foreign nationals constitute over 80 percent of the population. Brought in to construct the towering monuments to wealth that punctuate the skylines of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, this labor force works without the rights of citizenship, endures miserable living conditions, and is ultimately forced to leave the country. Until now, the humanitarian crisis of the so-called "guest workers" of the Gulf has barely been addressed in fiction. With his stunning, mind-altering debut novel Temporary People, Deepak Unnikrishnan delves into their histories, myths, struggles, and triumphs.

Combining the irrepressible linguistic invention of Salman Rushdie and the satirical vision of George Saunders, Unnikrishnan presents twenty-eight linked stories that careen from construction workers who shapeshift into luggage and escape a labor camp, to a woman who stitches back together the bodies of those who've fallen from buildings in progress, to a man who grows ideal workers designed to live twelve years and then perish--until they don't, and found a rebel community in the desert. With this polyphony, Unnikrishnan brilliantly maps a new, unruly global English. Giving substance and identity to the anonymous workers of the Gulf, he highlights the disturbing ways in which "progress" on a global scale is bound up with dehumanization.

In Brief will meet Tuesday, August 22nd at 6:30 pm! Email matt@citylitbooks.com for questions.

In August our monthly celebration of the weird, the Weird & Wonderful book club, will meet to discuss A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball.

A man and a woman have moved into a small house in a small village. The woman is an “examiner,” charged with teaching the man a series of simple functions—this is a chair, this is a fork, this is how you meet people. Still, the man is haunted by strange dreams, and when he meets a charismatic, volatile young woman named Hilda at a party, it throws everything he has learned into question. What is this village? And why is he here?

A fascinating novel of love, illness, despair, and betrayal, A Cure for Suicide is the most captivating novel yet from one of our most audacious and original young writers.

Stop by on Wednesday, August 23rd at 6:30 to talk about A Cure for Suicide.

Tell Me How It Ends is our newest reading group for nonfiction titles focusing on current events and social justice, hosted by Jordan. This month's book is No Is Not Enough by Naomi Klein.

This month No Is Not Enough by Naomi Klein is our Tell Me How It Ends book.

"This is one attempt to uncover how we got to this surreal political moment. It is also an attempt to predict how, under cover of shocks and crises, it could get a lot worse. And it's a plan for how, if we keep our heads, we might just be able to flip the script and arrive at a radically better future." -From the Introduction

Donald Trump's takeover of the White House is a dangerous escalation in a world of cascading crises. His reckless agenda--including a corporate coup in government, aggressive scapegoating and warmongering, and sweeping aside climate science to set off a fossil fuel frenzy--will generate waves of disasters and shocks to the economy, national security, and the environment. Acclaimed journalist, activist, and bestselling author Naomi Klein has spent two decades studying political shocks, climate change, and "brand bullies." From this unique perspective, she argues that Trump is not an aberration but a logical extension of the worst, most dangerous trends of the past half-century--the very conditions that have unleashed a rising tide of white nationalism the world over. It is not enough, she tells us, to merely resist, to say "no." Our historical moment demands more: a credible and inspiring "yes," a roadmap to reclaiming the populist ground from those who would divide us--one that sets a bold course for winning the fair and caring world we want and need. This timely, urgent book from one of our most influential thinkers offers a bracing positive shock of its own, helping us understand just how we got here, and how we can, collectively, come together and heal.

We’ll have our Tell Me How It Ends book club meeting on Monday, August 28th at 6:30 pm! Email jordan@citylitbooks.com

And don’t forget our Infinite Summer Challenge! We’re reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace before the end of the summer. Think you can make it?

A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human - and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.

If you think you’re up to it, grab a copy of Infinite Jest and meet us on Tuesday, September 19th at 6:30 to celebrate! Email matt@citylitbooks.com for questions.

No sign up necessary for any of our book clubs - just grab a copy and come ready to talk about the book! And don’t forget our book club discount!

Who’s excited about John Green’s new book coming this October?! The #1 bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars is back with Turtles All the Way Down this fall!

“It all begins with a fugitive billionaire and the promise of a cash reward.

Turtles All the Way Down is about lifelong friendship, the intimacy of an unexpected reunion, Star Wars fan fiction, and tuatara. But at its heart is Aza Holmes, a young woman navigating daily existence within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.

In his long-awaited return, John Green shares Aza’s story with shattering, unflinching clarity.”

We’ve got a list of pre-orders going so if you’re as excited as we are, get on it! Click below, send us an email, or give us a call and we’ll have your copy on October 10th!

If you’ve been to our Story Time on Saturday mornings, you’re probably already a big fan of Mr. Michael and his kids tunes. Well, good news – Mr. Michael is working on a children's pop album that's fun for both kids and the grown-ups who drive them around town! That’s right, Michael’s Music Machine Debut Album is on the way!

“As I've been in a classroom or dancing around the living room with my nephews, I wanted to hear children's music that reflected some of my favorite artists. This album takes inspiration from MIKA, Stevie Wonder, Sia, Elton John, and even a little Patti LaBelle. Michael's Music Machine will be a full album of original tunes that will get you up and dancing.”

As some of Mr. Michael’s biggest fans, we want to spread the word and help him get this album out! If you want to get involved, check out the Michael’s Music Machine Kickstarter page, and check him out Saturday mornings right here at City Lit Books!

Keep your summer reading goals on track – join one of our book clubs! The booksellers at City Lit have another round of reads picked for July, and we are excited to chat with you about these great books. This month we’ve got stories stretching through time, and exploring the divides between nations, families, man and woman.

First up, our Wilde Readers book club, a reading group for LGBTQ+ stories, takes on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.

Virginia Woolf described Orlando as "an escapade, half-laughing, half-serious; with great splashes of exaggeration," but many think Woolf's escapade is one of the most wickedly imaginative and sharply observed considerations of androgyny that this century will see. Orlando is, in fact, a character liberated from the restraints of time and sex. Born in the Elizabethan Age to wealth and position, he is a young male aristocrat at the beginning of the story - and a modern woman four centuries later. The hero-heroine sees monarchs come and go, hobnobs with great literary figures, and slips in and out of each new fashion. Woolf presents a brilliant pageant of history, society, and literature as well as subtle appreciation of the interplay between endings and beginnings, past and present, male and female.

Join Wilde Readers for discussion on Tuesday, July 11th at 6:30 pm.

The Found in Translation book club, where each month we dive into fresh English translations of stand-out fiction from around the world, will be reading Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag, translated from the Kannada by Srinath Perur.

A young man’s close-knit family is nearly destitute when his uncle founds a successful spice company, changing their fortunes overnight. As they move from a cramped, ant-infested shack to a larger house on the other side of Bangalore, and try to adjust to a new way of life, the family dynamic begins to shift. Allegiances realign; marriages are arranged and begin to falter; and conflict brews ominously in the background. Things become “ghachar ghochar”—a nonsense phrase uttered by one meaning something tangled beyond repair, a knot that can’t be untied. Elegantly written and punctuated by moments of unexpected warmth and humor, Ghachar Ghochar is a quietly enthralling, deeply unsettling novel about the shifting meanings—and consequences—of financial gain in contemporary India.

Found in Translation will meet Thursday July 20th at 6:30 pm.

Our newest book club, Tell Me How It Ends, for nonfiction titles focusing on current events and social justice, continues with Evicted by Matthew Desmond.

In Evicted, Harvard sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of 21st-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.

Tell Me How It Ends meets Monday, July 24th at 6:30 pm.

Next is our In Brief book club, exploring collections of short stories from writers new and established. For July, we are reading A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin.

A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the wit of Lorrie Moore, the grit of Raymond Carver, and a blend of humor and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the cafeterias and Laundromats of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians. Lovers of the short story will revel in this remarkable collection from a master of the form and wonder how they’d ever overlooked her in the first place.

In Brief will meet Tuesday, July 25th at 6:30 pm.

Our last book club meeting of the month, Weird & Wonderful returns to discuss China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh.

Winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and a Hugo and Nebula Award nominee. With this groundbreaking novel, Maureen F. McHugh established herself as one of the decade's best science fiction writers. In its pages, we enter a postrevolution America, moving from the hyperurbanized eastern seaboard to the Arctic bleakness of Baffin Island; from the new Imperial City to an agricultural commune on Mars. The overlapping lives of cyberkite fliers, lonely colonists, illicit neural-pressball players, and organic engineers blend into a powerful, taut story of a young man's journey of discovery. This is a macroscopic world of microscopic intensity, one of the most brilliant visions of modern SF.

Weird & Wonderful meets Wednesday, July 26th at 6:30 pm.

Remember –all our book club choices get a discount, and there’s no sign up, just come ready to talk about the book!

We’re kicking off the summer with an addition to our book club line up! Tell Me How It Ends will be a reading group for nonfiction titles focusing on current events and social justice, hosted by our bookseller Jordan. Appropriately, the first book for this club is Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questionsby Valeria Luiselli, ‘a damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the U.S.’

Structured around the forty questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman’s essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—both here and back home.
Valeria Luiselli was born Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. A novelist (The Story of My Teeth and Faces in the Crowd) and essayist (Sidewalks), her work has been translated into many languages and has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Granta, and McSweeney’s.

Tell Me How It Ends will have its first meeting on Monday, June 26th at 6:30 pm!

This month Wilde Readers, our book club for classic and contemporary LGBTQ+ lit, reads a new short story collection: Daydreamersby Jonathan Harper.

Ne'er-do-wells, prodigal sons, and young men without so much as a clue to their present state of mind let alone their futures are waiting to be met in the stories within Daydreamers, Jonathan Harper's debut collection. But these men are not Walter Mittys-everyday life refuses to allow them languor. Whether it be the roll of the dice in a Dungeons & Dragons game played in a hostile, rural bar, the lure of body modification and being suspended in front of a crowd, or discovering a body on the beach, the rough edges of each young man cannot help but be noticed, even admired. And once a young man is admired, he needs to decide whether or not to awaken from his daydreams.

Wilde Readers will meet Tuesday, June 13th at 6:30 pm.

Next for Found in Translation, the book club where each month we dive into a fresh English translation of stand-out fiction from around the world, is Camanchaca by Diego Zúñiga, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell.

A long drive across Chile’s Atacama desert, traversing “the worn-out puzzle” of a broken family—a young man’s corrosive intimacy with his mother, the obtrusive cheer of his absentee father, his uncle’s unexplained death. Camanchaca is a low fog pushing in from the sea, its moisture sustaining near-barren landscape. Sometimes, the silences are what bind us.

Join the Found in Translation book club on Thursday, June 15th at 6:30 pm.

In Brief, our club to explore a collection of short stories from writers new and established, takes on another contemporary pick this month: Hall of Small Mammalsby Thomas Pierce.

The stories in Thomas Pierce’s Hall of Small Mammals take place at the confluence of the commonplace and the cosmic, the intimate and the infinite. A fossil-hunter, a comedian, a hot- air balloon pilot, parents and children, believers and nonbelievers, the people in these stories are struggling to understand the absurdity and the magnitude of what it means to exist in a family, to exist in the world. From this enchanting primordial soup, Pierce’s voice emerges—a distinct and charming testament of the New South, melding contemporary concerns with their prehistoric roots to create a hilarious, deeply moving symphony of stories.

In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning. . . .

Join our monthly celebration of the weird on Wednesday, June 28th at 6:30 pm.

As always, don’t forget our book club discount and check back soon to see what our book clubs will be reading later this summer!

We're very excited to announce that we at City Lit Books are partnering with Bernie's Book Bank for the month of June to collect new and gently used books for kids of all ages, newborn up to sixth grade. Starting June 1st and running through the 30th, you can drop off any children’s books you’ve got collecting dust on your shelves, or buy books from us to donate. Our table in the children's section will be devoted to suggested picks, but we're happy with any books you'd love to give. No need to pack anything up—we’ll have collection boxes waiting for you.

Bernie's Book Bank collects, processes and distributes quality new and gently used children's books to significantly increase BOOK OWNERSHIP among at-risk infants, toddlers and school-age children throughout Chicagoland. Their work helps kids build full libraries to love and cherish for years to come. Check out their website to see who they are and how they work.

Stay tuned for details about our June 4th popup at the Logan Square Farmers’ Market, where we’ll be happy to talk books and book banks alike. Happy Spring!